"A comparison between Leopard Server and Linux would've been better, IMHO."
No, Linux is a kit of parts you use to build a system. Apple's market is some one who wants to open a box and pluig in a working server AND big AND here have ONE place to call for help for both hardware and software suport.
A better comparison would be with Sun Microsystems. Sun can sell you a UNIX box that does what an Apple server does. Heck it even uses much the same Open Source software. Put Sun can send a hardware or software guy out to your site on quick notice, few Linux vendors can (maybe IBM can?) What does Linux cost if you buy it with single point support?
But Apple is cost effective. They beat both Sun and IBM on price. Linux is only cheaper if you don't pay the person who builds if for you.
That said. I'm typing this on a Linux system. Been a big time Linux supporter from Kernel version 0.95 and a long time Sun user from long befor that.
"But I'd think that it would be psychologically uncomfortable to have your awareness of what is going on to either side cut off for long periods at a time. What if some evil, tentacled creature crawled out of a crater and was heading right for you? You'd never see it."
Not really. Many people actually like the narrower point of view. There are many, many commercial divers in the world. Working underwater is much like being in space. Both environments require life support equipment, both can have poor to no lighting so your field of vision is restricted to where you light is aimed. So we know a lot about working in in forgien environments with helmets that provide less than 180 degree fields of view.
In space you may not want the wide field, harsh sunlight hitting your face may not be what you need. Gare in the inside of the helmet is an issue too. You do NOT want light hitting the back side of the glas you are trying to look out from. I prefer glack silcon skirts on my mask for that reason -- a clearer, higher contrast view.
Put it this way: Have you ever used your hands cupped around your face to peek through a window. You need to block the light that comes in from the sides. I'd not want a fish bowel helmet if there was a light source in back of me or to may side. Which would work out to 75% of the time
I suspect these new helmits are designed with input from astronaughts and maybe some divers too.
The number of patches means nothing. I remember when my kids were preschool age and they thought if they had more coins they had more money. Just before that age many kids think if they break a cookie in half they double the number of cookies they have.
So you want an "In Soviet Russia joke"? They used to assign a quota to steel mills that was to produce so many tons of steel per year. As you would guess the mills produced mostly thick plate and very little sheet metal on the other hand glass factory output was measured in square meters so theyu made very thin glass.
So if we start measuring security in terms of the number of patches people will find very stupid ways to score high
The only reasonable way to measure security is in terms of real world failures. How often does a user get one of those stupid pop-up ads or a virus or whatever.
"If a CD had one-tenth of one per cent of the damage on one of those reels, it wouldn't play, period."
Wrong. What's going on here is that restoration techniques for audio tape is very low tech and easy but the author does not have the skill knowledge and resource to recover a defective CD. Not that it can't be done. Likely all that would be required is to copy the readable parts back to a hard disk and patch up the file system by hand then burn a new disk. People say the same with new cars, that "no one" can fix them like they could back in the the 1950s or 60's when they were much simpler.
There is a difference between being "inherently unfixable" and simply not knowing how to fix it. But I agree, the effect the same.
One thing in Digital's favor is that it is cheap and easy to copy and so there is likely to be backup copies. How many people backed up audio tapes of film negatives? these were frequently destroyed by fire but with digital there is a posibility that a backup copy was kept off site.
So what one should look at is the probability of survival of the data over some span of years not the probability of survival of one copy of the media
Re:Are they better, or just different?
on
eSATA Connectors
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· Score: 3, Interesting
"...I'm not a big fan of the current SATA connectors. They tend to fall off at the slightest provocation. I can't work in my case without having to check at the end that all of the SATA connectors are still in place..."
This is a poor case design. The best way to use a SATA drive is to have NO CABLE. The drives are designed to they can be pushed onto a socket that is soldered to a printed circuit board. All new design computers should be designed this way, with no cable. Drive push into the computer from the front like SCSI drives with SCA connectors
If the computer uses a cable (for power or data) then it is a retrofit, a hold over from the IDE era. Over time internal cables should just "go away". Now you see way the connector can't be totight or have a positive retention (latch.)
No, I'm right. My point was that the guy must have been either joking or grossly ignorant not to know about the VAB.
That I left off the world "one of the" does not matter to the overall point. The building is so well known that people here are able to site specifications on it and it has it's own wikipedia page.
Is this a joke or does this person not know not know about the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)?
Of course they keep it indoors. But of course they take it outside before they light off the big rockets and launch it into space. Makes a mess of the building if you try doing the inside. What happened was they chaecked the weather, it looked good so they took the think outdoors and then unexpectedly they got hailed on.
The VAB is quite famous. It was built in the 1960's and was and still is the largest enclosed space in the world. It was designed to house a fully assembled Appolo era moon rockets, (A Saturn V with all the upper stages)
They are NOT "spending" the money. It's more like "investing". Once they get everyone off of those analog channels they can sell the newly freed up RF spectrum for a LOT more than $1,000,000,000. So by investing this money on converter boxes they get to auction off the old channels years earlier.
A billion sound like a lot of money but in the US that amounts to less then four bucks per person.
"We will never see a production ethanol injection vehicle. Vaporware with a capital V"
We will see $5.00 per galon in the US in the not distant future. I'd say any new car you buy today will see $5/gal gas in it's tank before the end of it's life. At that price this new system will recover $20 per fill up. It will pay for itself quickly. From a car maker's point of view they have to think "how many more cars will we sell if the MPG can be listed as 25% greater?" Of course that depends. Many buyers don't care about MPG but in some markets it is a huge seling point.
Cars today are computer controlled so it is very cheap and esy to revert to "standard" timing if say the ethanol system runs out of fails.
Don't forget military and fleet applications. This market does care about MPG. I can see this used on Humvees and FedEx trucks
This system sounds like it is completely independent of GPS. The tethered bouys would have no need for GPS they would have their position set into them when they were placed on their tether and as this would never change it would not need to receive a GPS signal. So where is the tie in to GPS? OK the ship that is dropping the bouys might have a GPS aboard but it could use some other navigation system.
As for military subs not wanting to give their possition away. Yes of course they would not use this. I suspect the best use of this would be for non-millitary scientific or salvage subs.
One way to make a sonar based system that would be require the sub to emit signals is to have each bouy send it's location and the exact time. Subs could passively listen to this an deduce their position. This is exactly how GPS currently works with pasive radio recievers
Another way for a sub to directly use GPS that might even work for the military would be to place a GPS antenna in a small float and release the float tethered to a long wire.
Why 3Gb/S to a 5400RPM drive? Easy, the 3Gb/S interface does not connect to the drive. It connects to a huge RAM cache. The cache is fast enough to accept data at a high rate. High peek speeds are useful and it likely adds little or no additional cost to the product. For some uses average sustained speed matters but for many more peek speed matters.
"Why do Microsoft have to keep re-inventing the wheel?"
That's their business model. It works well too. It goes like this: Invent new file format. Make new format the default for microsoft programs. Then as people start to distribute the new files others find they need Microsoft software to read the files. It works because users are stupid, they will save using the default format and then attach it to some email.
"training staff to use an entirly new system takes a lot of time and money"
This is why they don't want to jump on Vista. they'd have to train staff on the new system. A lot of people are thinking the same. If you are going to swap systems why not jump to Apple's Mac OS X or to Linux or to Solaris. You might save money and get better software at the same time.
Microsoft is in a bad place. If they don't make some radical changes they run the risk of being very much out of date in 10 years. But if they do make big changes then their users think "If I'm going to have to re-learn everything I may as well make a big jump to the Mac or to Linux. The need for backwards compatibility will eventually be what kills Windows.
As for training. It's over blown. I pit Linux and Open Offic on a system iones and just said "it's the new version of your software" For a normal user they can't tell and it works enough like what they had they just continue on and don't really care.
"Why is Lunar dust so different than "normal" dust and/or sand that we breathe and/or eat every day?"
Moon dust is just broken glass. It has microscopic sharp edges and is strong and abrasive. On Earth there is water and air and the dust gets moved around and the sharp edges get worn off quickly by a weathering process. The dust on the Moon is created by imacts where rock gets melted and fractured, those fractures make sharp edges that last forever. Beach sand here on Earth gets tumbled by wave acted an ground into a round, smooth shape.
"Do discoveries like this mean anything at this time considering there's no way to prove any of it?"
There is no way in science to PROVE ANYTHING. All one can do is disprove a theory you can never prove a theory to be true. This is a very basic part of how science works
A theory is a good theory if it is predictive and makes good predictions and it is disprovable and it has not been disproved. But a theory can't be proven to be true.
Have you ever read Wittgenstein? Goggle the name. He wrote, long before the 1960's a question "Have I ever been to the moon?" He argued that while he thought he'd never been there and knew of no one who had he could not prove he's never been to the moon and further that such proof was impossible. Proof is very different from being very, very certain. He goes on to explain the difference and what can and can not be proven. Some things can never be proven not matter what you do
In science all you can be is "very certain" but must always be open to being proven wrong. For example we think and are very certain that light follows the inverse square law but can you prove that it ALWAYS does? It only takes one exception to disprove the theory but a trillion observations would not prove it true.
"Should Microsoft be _forced_ to sell a product that doesn't benefit them?"
Yes they should be forced. For the same reason someone can be forced to do community service work or forced to pay a fine.
Microsoft was forced to continue to offer Office for Mac because of the way a law suit was settled. They got caught using some stuff from Apple without paying for it and as a result were forced to do quite a few things.
You only read the summary. In the text of the bill, they have a definition of open standard. Basically it must be controlled by an independent standards organization (not one company) and the format must be in must by more then one company. So if you control the "standard" and you are the only one using that "standard" even if you publish the specs it ain't no standard.
In order for Microsoft to win this they would have to give up control of the file format and build an office suite that could share documents with another company's office suite. They will do ANYTHING before they do that. I suspect a few billion dollars under the table will kill this proposal. The future of the company is on the line here. They could say point blank "vote for this and we will write a blank check to you opponent, who ever he is come the next election. Document lock-in is the foundation of Microsoft's whole businnes without that they are in a bad way. This effects more then just government offices. It effects anyone who communicates with a government office even indirectly. I'm sure they will work hard on multiple fronts to kill this
"Seriously, though, how likely is it that the gravitational and orbital calculations were just not quite as precise when they did them 35 years ago?"
Do you think the calculation was done only once? No. It's pretty much a continuous process. While the calculation would have been as accurate 35 years ago as today. (People have known how to multiply and divide out to many decimal places for century's now) What's changes and what limits our ability is that we don't exactly know the exact mass and location of every object in the Solar System. But if you track the spacecraft you can deduce forces acting on it by where it goes. The anomaly here is that we know the force but can't explain it in terms of gravity. The most likely thing is a small leak in the plumbing that acts like a weak jet. It could also be explained by some revolutionary physics. But if you look back in history and count the number of time plumbing has leaked vs. the number of times physics hes been re-written. My money is on the 30 year old plumbing.
It's not a case of not hitting the spot that was aimed for but of watching a curve develop over decades and seeing the curve be a shape that is not quite what one would expect if only gravity were the cause.
I agree, being good with a screwdriver does not mean you know anything about computers. An certainly does not mean you know anything about software. Also if the site is about "over clocking" it will attract a set of users who don't need or want Linux. Only gamers care about over clocking and most Linux users reliability matters more than anything else. If you are into games stick with Windows XP.
The right way to choose an operating system is to use the one that runs the applications you need to run. If those are all games then XP is it. It the applications are for digital content creation (making videos, music or photos) then you might want Apple's Mac OS X. If they are the Apache web server and a C+ compiler then Linux is pretty good. If you are web surfing and reading email, it does not matter they all work.
As for ease of use. The fair test is to give a Linux system to some one who has never seen Linux and a Windows system to some some who has never seen Windows. So go out to the South American Rain Forest and find and Indian who's never used a computer. Give him a bare mother board and boxed hard drive some RAM sticks and a retail copy of Vista. Tell him "make it work". Give is brother a the same kit of parts except use a boxed retail copy of Linux. My bet is that the Linux system will go together quicker.
Not a fair tst if you give Windows to a long-time windows user and Linux to someone new to Linux.
Oh Yes, have you seen what happens if you post a request for help in a Windows forum."
You are right. The distance and therefor communications time is better if the device is closer. But butting the device inside the CPU means it is NOT as close to something else. One example is the graphic cards. There, you want the GPU to be close to the video RAM,not close to the CPU. Another device is the phone modem (remember those) you want that device close to the phone wire. Now let's look at new types of processors. A Disk I/O processor that makes a database run faster. You would want that to be outside of the CPU. It should belocated between the PCI bus (or other I/O bus and the system RAM. Putting it inside the CPU will just cause more traffic on the CPU's bus.
The reason you might want the processor to be NOT insde the CPU is to keep some data off the CPU's bus. A floating point processor is an example of something you dop want inside the CPU but a RAID chip is best outside the CPU. You need to deside case by case.
Our company has gone further than the DOT. Not only is upgrade not allowed but a PC with Vista is not allowed to connect to the corporate network. Our government customer has banned Vista from it's network too and we need to inter operate. The DOT is not alone. Many organizations are going to wait and do 6 or 12 months of testing first.
Why did you buy a "daylight" lamp if you don't like the color? Daylight is over 5000 Kelvins color temperature. Find one that is lower if that is what you want. I do prefer the higher color temps, makes color more accurate. I bought a CFL "bug light" for use outdoors. It's yellow. You can get anything you want but you have to read the package.
I do agree. Just specify a minimum lumen to watt ratio and not ban any technology.
"3/ You decide what goes on your computer. You're the boss."
THis is the best option but the word "you" needs to be better defined. "you" can ware many hats and have different roles and different times. The best way to do it would be to understand the "you" can be both a user and a system admin. The OS needs to force the Admin to make any changes to the computer.
Also programs started by a person run ONLY with the privelage of that person. So if you the user is running nothing you do can run as you the admin.
The system should force you to change your log in account to make system changes and it should also force you to not run as the admin for normal operation.
Look at how BSD works. It is simple to understand and for 20 years it has done well. So well that everyone (except Microsoft) has copied it.
So the people who run data centers with VMware will find it very expensive to run a zillion copies of Vista on one PC. Many a few of them will stop doing that. They can convert one virtual machine at a time over to Linux or Solaris. Both are free. When you use VMs it is very easy to swap out OSes and now Microsoft has given them some incentive to switch.
So why stay with MS Windows?
Bill Gates got rich based on just one true observation: There are a LOT more people who don't understand computers than there are computer experts. Why not sell to the first group? He was right and before the 1980's everyone was selling only to the second group. So he continues to sell crap to people who can't tel crap what they see it and a lt of these people manage data centers. There are more people then you'd think who know they don't know anything about computers except how to point and click through Windows menus and no way on earth will these people switch out to so other OS, they'd be helpless and they know it. They will pay ANYTHNG to continue with Windows. MS knows this and will ratchet the prise up. They know they've lost the guys with good technical backgrounds.
Slashdot Mirror
"A comparison between Leopard Server and Linux would've been better, IMHO."
No, Linux is a kit of parts you use to build a system. Apple's market is some one who wants to open a box and pluig in a working server AND big AND here have ONE place to call for help for both hardware and software suport.
A better comparison would be with Sun Microsystems. Sun can sell you a UNIX box that does what an Apple server does. Heck it even uses much the same Open Source software. Put Sun can send a hardware or software guy out to your site on quick notice, few Linux vendors can (maybe IBM can?) What does Linux cost if you buy it with single point support?
But Apple is cost effective. They beat both Sun and IBM on price. Linux is only cheaper if you don't pay the person who builds if for you.
That said. I'm typing this on a Linux system. Been a big time Linux supporter from Kernel version 0.95 and a long time Sun user from long befor that.
"But I'd think that it would be psychologically uncomfortable to have your awareness of what is going on to either side cut off for long periods at a time. What if some evil, tentacled creature crawled out of a crater and was heading right for you? You'd never see it." Not really. Many people actually like the narrower point of view. There are many, many commercial divers in the world. Working underwater is much like being in space. Both environments require life support equipment, both can have poor to no lighting so your field of vision is restricted to where you light is aimed. So we know a lot about working in in forgien environments with helmets that provide less than 180 degree fields of view. In space you may not want the wide field, harsh sunlight hitting your face may not be what you need. Gare in the inside of the helmet is an issue too. You do NOT want light hitting the back side of the glas you are trying to look out from. I prefer glack silcon skirts on my mask for that reason -- a clearer, higher contrast view. Put it this way: Have you ever used your hands cupped around your face to peek through a window. You need to block the light that comes in from the sides. I'd not want a fish bowel helmet if there was a light source in back of me or to may side. Which would work out to 75% of the time I suspect these new helmits are designed with input from astronaughts and maybe some divers too.
The number of patches means nothing. I remember when my kids were preschool age and they thought if they had more coins they had more money. Just before that age many kids think if they break a cookie in half they double the number of cookies they have.
So you want an "In Soviet Russia joke"? They used to assign a quota to steel mills that was to produce so many tons of steel per year. As you would guess the mills produced mostly thick plate and very little sheet metal on the other hand glass factory output was measured in square meters so theyu made very thin glass.
So if we start measuring security in terms of the number of patches people will find very stupid ways to score high
The only reasonable way to measure security is in terms of real world failures. How often does a user get one of those stupid pop-up ads or a virus or whatever.
NO. it DOES belong in the kernel. The reason is because these changes must appear to be atomic to other processes. Can't do this in user space
"If a CD had one-tenth of one per cent of the damage on one of those reels, it wouldn't play, period."
Wrong. What's going on here is that restoration techniques for audio tape is very low tech and easy but the author does not have the skill knowledge and resource to recover a defective CD. Not that it can't be done. Likely all that would be required is to copy the readable parts back to a hard disk and patch up the file system by hand then burn a new disk. People say the same with new cars, that "no one" can fix them like they could back in the the 1950s or 60's when they were much simpler.
There is a difference between being "inherently unfixable" and simply not knowing how to fix it. But I agree, the effect the same.
One thing in Digital's favor is that it is cheap and easy to copy and so there is likely to be backup copies. How many people backed up audio tapes of film negatives? these were frequently destroyed by fire but with digital there is a posibility that a backup copy was kept off site.
So what one should look at is the probability of survival of the data over some span of years not the probability of survival of one copy of the media
"...I'm not a big fan of the current SATA connectors. They tend to fall off at the slightest provocation. I can't work in my case without having to check at the end that all of the SATA connectors are still in place..."
This is a poor case design. The best way to use a SATA drive is to have NO CABLE. The drives are designed to they can be pushed onto a socket that is soldered to a printed circuit board. All new design computers should be designed this way, with no cable. Drive push into the computer from the front like SCSI drives with SCA connectors
If the computer uses a cable (for power or data) then it is a retrofit, a hold over from the IDE era. Over time internal cables should just "go away". Now you see way the connector can't be totight or have a positive retention (latch.)
No, I'm right. My point was that the guy must have been either joking or grossly ignorant not to know about the VAB.
That I left off the world "one of the" does not matter to the overall point. The building is so well known that people here are able to site specifications on it and it has it's own wikipedia page.
"Just park the damn thing under a roof for once."
Is this a joke or does this person not know not know about the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)?
Of course they keep it indoors. But of course they take it outside before they light off the big rockets and launch it into space. Makes a mess of the building if you try doing the inside. What happened was they chaecked the weather, it looked good so they took the think outdoors and then unexpectedly they got hailed on.
The VAB is quite famous. It was built in the 1960's and was and still is the largest enclosed space in the world. It was designed to house a fully assembled Appolo era moon rockets, (A Saturn V with all the upper stages)
See here for more info on the VAB
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/vab.html
They are NOT "spending" the money. It's more like "investing". Once they get everyone off of those analog channels they can sell the newly freed up RF spectrum for a LOT more than $1,000,000,000. So by investing this money on converter boxes they get to auction off the old channels years earlier.
A billion sound like a lot of money but in the US that amounts to less then four bucks per person.
"We will never see a production ethanol injection vehicle. Vaporware with a capital V" We will see $5.00 per galon in the US in the not distant future. I'd say any new car you buy today will see $5/gal gas in it's tank before the end of it's life. At that price this new system will recover $20 per fill up. It will pay for itself quickly. From a car maker's point of view they have to think "how many more cars will we sell if the MPG can be listed as 25% greater?" Of course that depends. Many buyers don't care about MPG but in some markets it is a huge seling point. Cars today are computer controlled so it is very cheap and esy to revert to "standard" timing if say the ethanol system runs out of fails. Don't forget military and fleet applications. This market does care about MPG. I can see this used on Humvees and FedEx trucks
This system sounds like it is completely independent of GPS. The tethered bouys would have no need for GPS they would have their position set into them when they were placed on their tether and as this would never change it would not need to receive a GPS signal. So where is the tie in to GPS? OK the ship that is dropping the bouys might have a GPS aboard but it could use some other navigation system.
As for military subs not wanting to give their possition away. Yes of course they would not use this. I suspect the best use of this would be for non-millitary scientific or salvage subs.
One way to make a sonar based system that would be require the sub to emit signals is to have each bouy send it's location and the exact time. Subs could passively listen to this an deduce their position. This is exactly how GPS currently works with pasive radio recievers
Another way for a sub to directly use GPS that might even work for the military would be to place a GPS antenna in a small float and release the float tethered to a long wire.
Why 3Gb/S to a 5400RPM drive? Easy, the 3Gb/S interface does not connect to the drive. It connects to a huge RAM cache. The cache is fast enough to accept data at a high rate. High peek speeds are useful and it likely adds little or no additional cost to the product. For some uses average sustained speed matters but for many more peek speed matters.
"Why do Microsoft have to keep re-inventing the wheel?"
That's their business model. It works well too. It goes like this: Invent new file format. Make new format the default for microsoft programs. Then as people start to distribute the new files others find they need Microsoft software to read the files. It works because users are stupid, they will save using the default format and then attach it to some email.
"training staff to use an entirly new system takes a lot of time and money"
This is why they don't want to jump on Vista. they'd have to train staff on the new system. A lot of people are thinking the same. If you are going to swap systems why not jump to Apple's Mac OS X or to Linux or to Solaris. You might save money and get better software at the same time.
Microsoft is in a bad place. If they don't make some radical changes they run the risk of being very much out of date in 10 years. But if they do make big changes then their users think "If I'm going to have to re-learn everything I may as well make a big jump to the Mac or to Linux. The need for backwards compatibility will eventually be what kills Windows.
As for training. It's over blown. I pit Linux and Open Offic on a system iones and just said "it's the new version of your software" For a normal user they can't tell and it works enough like what they had they just continue on and don't really care.
"Why is Lunar dust so different than "normal" dust and/or sand that we breathe and/or eat every day?"
Moon dust is just broken glass. It has microscopic sharp edges and is strong and abrasive. On Earth there is water and air and the dust gets moved around and the sharp edges get worn off quickly by a weathering process. The dust on the Moon is created by imacts where rock gets melted and fractured, those fractures make sharp edges that last forever. Beach sand here on Earth gets tumbled by wave acted an ground into a round, smooth shape.
"Do discoveries like this mean anything at this time considering there's no way to prove any of it?"
There is no way in science to PROVE ANYTHING. All one can do is disprove a theory you can never prove a theory to be true. This is a very basic part of how science works
A theory is a good theory if it is predictive and makes good predictions and it is disprovable and it has not been disproved. But a theory can't be proven to be true.
Have you ever read Wittgenstein? Goggle the name. He wrote, long before the 1960's a question "Have I ever been to the moon?" He argued that while he thought he'd never been there and knew of no one who had he could not prove he's never been to the moon and further that such proof was impossible. Proof is very different from being very, very certain. He goes on to explain the difference and what can and can not be proven. Some things can never be proven not matter what you do
In science all you can be is "very certain" but must always be open to being proven wrong. For example we think and are very certain that light follows the inverse square law but can you prove that it ALWAYS does? It only takes one exception to disprove the theory but a trillion observations would not prove it true.
"Should Microsoft be _forced_ to sell a product that doesn't benefit them?"
Yes they should be forced. For the same reason someone can be forced to do community service work or forced to pay a fine.
Microsoft was forced to continue to offer Office for Mac because of the way a law suit was settled. They got caught using some stuff from Apple without paying for it and as a result were forced to do quite a few things.
You only read the summary. In the text of the bill, they have a definition of open standard. Basically it must be controlled by an independent standards organization (not one company) and the format must be in must by more then one company. So if you control the "standard" and you are the only one using that "standard" even if you publish the specs it ain't no standard.
In order for Microsoft to win this they would have to give up control of the file format and build an office suite that could share documents with another company's office suite. They will do ANYTHING before they do that. I suspect a few billion dollars under the table will kill this proposal. The future of the company is on the line here. They could say point blank "vote for this and we will write a blank check to you opponent, who ever he is come the next election. Document lock-in is the foundation of Microsoft's whole businnes without that they are in a bad way. This effects more then just government offices. It effects anyone who communicates with a government office even indirectly. I'm sure they will work hard on multiple fronts to kill this
"Seriously, though, how likely is it that the gravitational and orbital calculations were just not quite as precise when they did them 35 years ago?"
Do you think the calculation was done only once? No. It's pretty much a continuous process. While the calculation would have been as accurate 35 years ago as today. (People have known how to multiply and divide out to many decimal places for century's now) What's changes and what limits our ability is that we don't exactly know the exact mass and location of every object in the Solar System. But if you track the spacecraft you can deduce forces acting on it by where it goes. The anomaly here is that we know the force but can't explain it in terms of gravity. The most likely thing is a small leak in the plumbing that acts like a weak jet. It could also be explained by some revolutionary physics. But if you look back in history and count the number of time plumbing has leaked vs. the number of times physics hes been re-written. My money is on the 30 year old plumbing.
It's not a case of not hitting the spot that was aimed for but of watching a curve develop over decades and seeing the curve be a shape that is not quite what one would expect if only gravity were the cause.
I agree, being good with a screwdriver does not mean you know anything about computers. An certainly does not mean you know anything about software. Also if the site is about "over clocking" it will attract a set of users who don't need or want Linux. Only gamers care about over clocking and most Linux users reliability matters more than anything else. If you are into games stick with Windows XP.
The right way to choose an operating system is to use the one that runs the applications you need to run. If those are all games then XP is it. It the applications are for digital content creation (making videos, music or photos) then you might want Apple's Mac OS X. If they are the Apache web server and a C+ compiler then Linux is pretty good. If you are web surfing and reading email, it does not matter they all work.
As for ease of use. The fair test is to give a Linux system to some one who has never seen Linux and a Windows system to some some who has never seen Windows. So go out to the South American Rain Forest and find and Indian who's never used a computer. Give him a bare mother board and boxed hard drive some RAM sticks and a retail copy of Vista. Tell him "make it work". Give is brother a the same kit of parts except use a boxed retail copy of Linux. My bet is that the Linux system will go together quicker.
Not a fair tst if you give Windows to a long-time windows user and Linux to someone new to Linux.
Oh Yes, have you seen what happens if you post a request for help in a Windows forum."
You are right. The distance and therefor communications time is better if the device is closer. But butting the device inside the CPU means it is NOT as close to something else. One example is the graphic cards. There, you want the GPU to be close to the video RAM,not close to the CPU. Another device is the phone modem (remember those) you want that device close to the phone wire. Now let's look at new types of processors. A Disk I/O processor that makes a database run faster. You would want that to be outside of the CPU. It should belocated between the PCI bus (or other I/O bus and the system RAM. Putting it inside the CPU will just cause more traffic on the CPU's bus.
The reason you might want the processor to be NOT insde the CPU is to keep some data off the CPU's bus. A floating point processor is an example of something you dop want inside the CPU but a RAID chip is best outside the CPU. You need to deside case by case.
Our company has gone further than the DOT. Not only is upgrade not allowed but a PC with Vista is not allowed to connect to the corporate network. Our government customer has banned Vista from it's network too and we need to inter operate. The DOT is not alone. Many organizations are going to wait and do 6 or 12 months of testing first.
Why did you buy a "daylight" lamp if you don't like the color? Daylight is over 5000 Kelvins color temperature. Find one that is lower if that is what you want. I do prefer the higher color temps, makes color more accurate. I bought a CFL "bug light" for use outdoors. It's yellow. You can get anything you want but you have to read the package.
I do agree. Just specify a minimum lumen to watt ratio and not ban any technology.
"3/ You decide what goes on your computer. You're the boss."
THis is the best option but the word "you" needs to be better defined. "you" can ware many hats and have different roles and different times. The best way to do it would be to understand the "you" can be both a user and a system admin. The OS needs to force the Admin to make any changes to the computer.
Also programs started by a person run ONLY with the privelage of that person. So if you the user is running nothing you do can run as you the admin.
The system should force you to change your log in account to make system changes and it should also force you to not run as the admin for normal operation.
Look at how BSD works. It is simple to understand and for 20 years it has done well. So well that everyone (except Microsoft) has copied it.
So the people who run data centers with VMware will find it very expensive to run a zillion copies of Vista on one PC. Many a few of them will stop doing that. They can convert one virtual machine at a time over to Linux or Solaris. Both are free. When you use VMs it is very easy to swap out OSes and now Microsoft has given them some incentive to switch.
So why stay with MS Windows?
Bill Gates got rich based on just one true observation: There are a LOT more people who don't understand computers than there are computer experts. Why not sell to the first group? He was right and before the 1980's everyone was selling only to the second group. So he continues to sell crap to people who can't tel crap what they see it and a lt of these people manage data centers. There are more people then you'd think who know they don't know anything about computers except how to point and click through Windows menus and no way on earth will these people switch out to so other OS, they'd be helpless and they know it. They will pay ANYTHNG to continue with Windows. MS knows this and will ratchet the prise up. They know they've lost the guys with good technical backgrounds.